BP may siphon 28,000 bbl/day from leak by early next week

18 June 2010 02:57[Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Energy major BP is expected to capture about 28,000 barrels of oil per day from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico by "some time early next week", Admiral Thad Allen, the US national incident commander said late on Thursday.

The oil giant was also capturing “several thousand more” barrels a day in addition to the 15,000 bbl/day of oil already siphoned up to the first containment vessel on the surface, Allen said.

BP would be able to siphon more oil once a second ship deployed to the site of the spill was fully operational, he said.

The vessel, the Q4000, has already been connected to the pipe system leading from a containment cap placed on the broken wellhead of the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, Allen said.

"We have the potential of bringing our production capacity up to about 28,000 barrels day probably by sometime early next week," he said.

"They'll bring the rates up slowly and make sure they can control it," he said.

Allen said that he expected BP to be able to contain around 53,000 barrels a day by the end of June.

"At that point ... we want to convert over and put a new cap on the wellbore that will allow us to have more hoses come up to much larger processing vessels," Allen said.

The goal was to capture between 60,000 and 80,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of July, he added.

Oil began spewing from the bottom of the Gulf after a 20 April explosion sank the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon offshore rig.